Earth Science Blog- Minerals

Article: The Pernicious Allure of Lead By: Natalie Angier

This article starts off by talking about how the human body needs a diet enriched with many ingredients from the periodic table. It states that iron is needed to capture oxygen, cooper and chromium to absorb energy, cobalt helps with our nerves and zinc helps with our genes. This articles purpose though is to talk about lead, which humans do not need a daily requirement of.
Humans, or any kind of life do not need even a small amount of lead to survive. For us, especially young children even the smallest amount of lead can have serious consequences. Brains that are developing have a sensitivity to this metal. Many scientists are concerned because lead paint it being used on children's toys. People are worried that with the millions of toys out there that they are risking children to be exposed to constraints on their neurological development. The article says that lead is relatively uncommon but we have made it as a part of our everyday lives by taking it up from the ground and putting it in our surroundings. Lead had been one of the first metals mined since it doesn't take much to convert the raw lead into usable lead. Lead is used to form pots, pans, water pipes, paint pigment , etc. Lead has proved to be a versatilemineral, but using it may have some consequences affecting our developing youths.
I related this to class because during our last meet we started to discuss what minernals were and why they are important.We learned that minerals are naturally occuring, solid elements or compounds that have a definite chemical composition, an orderly internal arrangement of atoms and definite physical properties. In the article I learned that one of leads physical properties is that it is softer and it has a very low melting point. Also lead is made up with more than 200 nuclear particles, this gave me a little more information on leads chemical composition.
In class we also discussed how important minerals are to humans. We need certain elements to survive. The element I read about was the complete opposite. I learned that some elements can be very dangerous to a persons physical development, but they are useful in many different ways. I think I understand better now why everyone would always tell you not to chew on your pencil lead.